If you have ever sat through a social media marketing presentation, you probably heard that social media is all about engagement and conversations.  Social media can be a valuable tool for listening and engaging with your audience for customer service, but when it comes to lead generation, is conversation or reach more important?

There is a fairy tale that seems to surround social media.  Everybody wants it to be a completely new way to market that they almost ignore the obvious.  One of the best parts about social media is it’s an affordable way to put your brand / content in front of tens of thousands of people or more.  For lead generation, your goal should be to send that traffic back to your website and convert them into leads.

It is marketing’s job to provide the sales force with a steady stream of high quality leads.  To truly engage with an audience in a way that builds a real relationship means you have to limit the number of people you interact with.  You can not engage with a 1,000 people through social media in a way that builds a relationship.  You will have a difficult time truly engaging with 100 people.  What ultimately happens is you will engage with 10-20 and end up broadcasting to the rest.  The question becomes, if you are generating leads from social media, is it the conversation that is generating the leads or the broadcasting.

Does the conversation matter?

There is a positive correlation between views and leads.  The more views your content receives the more leads your site will generate.  Dan Zarella of Hubspot analyzed the impact conversations have on Facebook views and blog views.  In both cases he found no significant correlation between comments and views.  If conversations do not increase views, then is it reasonable to assume conversations do not increase leads?

Marketing Takeaway

Social media provides the opportunity for brands to engage with both happy and dissatisfied customers in an unprecedented way.  Social media conversations and engagement have changed the way companies approach customer service, but for social media to be effective as a lead generation channel it is critical to grow your online audience.  Don’t become so obsessed with the conversation that you stop trying to grow your following due to a lack of an efficient way to engage them.  Promote your content via social media directing your followers back to your website where they will find the rest of your content and a relevant offer.  Conversations will happen naturally as others comment on your content and you comment on theirs.  Despite what we may want to believe social media still appears to be a numbers game.

What are your thoughts

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